Wartune Review: A Hero Focused Strategy MMO

Wartune Review: A Hero Focused Strategy MMO

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist

This week I took the time to play yet another browser strategy MMORPG, Wartune, a game by R2Games. This fantasy game revolves around knights, mages, and archers and lets you experience the diversity that a more typical MMORPG experience offers. As you take the role of a hero, your duty is to protect your city, maintaining its defenses and seeing that progress continues steadily. While getting the needed resources and upgrading your kingdom you will also have to watch out for evil foes and players seeking chaos in your humble territory.

Before you get into the action you will have to choose between three different classes. Just like in any other MMORPG these are the standard classes that most of the MMO’s in general use, you can choose between the Mage, Knight and Archer. As a big fan of Mages I decided to go with this intelligent kind of character to perish every evil-doer on my way. There aren’t unfortunately many other options except choosing the gender that you would like to play. This also means that all the players with the same class will look exactly like each other which was a little disappointing.

When you are done with your future hero, it is time to be taught the controls! Immediately in the tutorial, the game shows you what kind of cereal you have in your bowl. This game may look like many others, but the diversity is actually a big difference. Though the core browser empire mechanic remains of assigning build orders and waiting in real time for completion. However, Wartune is actually more focused on the hero itself, and as a result the combat is a great improvement over many strategy games competing for their share of this genre. The Combat in Wartune is turn-based but frantic. Every turn is played out automatically while players decide how to expend mana and launch spells in a queuing system, causing the hero to perform these actions on their following turn.

Besides maintaining your city and making sure you have enough men to defend your stronghold, you can do quests and missions to earn some extra bucks. When you have accepted a quest you can go to the campaign map and walk through the map to do the quest objectives. This is also a feature that I am really happy to see as it helps blur the realms between client-based MMORPGs and browser strategy titles, making the world feel more alive and less menu based. On your journey to kill all evil-doers you will come across a few comrades that will help you in your battle. These helpful minions function as an extra shield and are also capable of dealing some extra hits on your opponent. If you’re willing to invest in them they can also be upgraded, and there are a ton of different soldiers you can choose to help you in various situations.

Because Wartune is mostly focused on the combat, the skills are really important. As a mage I had a lot of useful Area of Effect spells that helped me attack multiple foes on the battle field. When you level up, you are able to choose and unlock more and more skills. You are able to spend multiple points on one skill, so the person actually decides how strong a spell should be and how advanced it is. This gives players rare customization not often found in this genre that adds for some interesting surprise assaults in PvP. Sometimes one well timed spell can mean the difference between victory and defeat so don’t neglect this system if you want to become a power player in Wartune.

Conclusion

When I first heard of the game I thought it was going to be yet another boring strategy game that the net has already too many of. Boy was I surprised when I actually played the game. Many strategy games should take this game as an example, because of the many features and unique style of controlling your hero. I felt a stronger sense of progression than normal and really wanted to keep playing as a result. On top of that, the game looks absolutely beautiful and some of the monsters I have fought look far too good for a browser title. If you are interested in a strategy game that is more focused on your character than on the city itself, then I recommend you to try out Wartune. Even a hardcore veteran of the genre like myself still found enough new ideas here to stay engaged.